Freedom is not Enough
by EnchanteRhea
Summary: He was always in pieces, because of Seimei. The most infuriating thing was, he was happy that way. Kio hoped Soubi would be finally set free. But to some, freedom is not enough.


Disclaimer: Loveless is not mine. If it were mine, I would not be writing fanfiction.  
The music: Corey Taylor : _Bother_

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**Freedom is not Enough**  
by Rhea Logan

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"_I breathed a sigh of relief when Seimei died.  
I thought he would be set free this way. But I  
was wrong. He became a zombie. Seimei still  
controlled Soubi, even after death." --_Kaidou Kio

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His hands were freezing cold. Kio muttered sleepily under his breath, not quite sure he should bother to chase away the sand from under his eyelids. He rubbed his hands together, more alert as the seconds passed, and increasingly annoyed as he tried to push his foggy mind through the process of figuring out why it was so awfully _cold. _

Eyes shifting over, he looked around, squinting before he located his glasses in his lap and replaced them on his face. The small cloud of his own breath surprised him; a curious shade of gray against the darkness of the room. Winter or otherwise, it was never freezing here. Not like this, anyway. Unless...

He glanced towards the bed where he remembered leaving Soubi asleep the past evening. A confused frown creased his forehead. By all indications, he was looking at his own bed across the room, and he was sitting... well, that explained his stiff neck and sore shoulders. Right. He had tiptoed back to this couch when, wide awake, he could no longer stand Soubi's trashing in his sleep that pulled at his heartstrings a little too hard.

They were growing ever the more sore as Kio studied the dark interior. He noted the blanket thrown away on the floor, spared the empty space where Soubi had slept a regretful look. Then the door, left ajar, and he groaned as it moved ever so slightly back and forth on its quiet hinges. Soundless, even as Kio almost expected a moaning sound straight from a horror movie; one of those that indicated the main character's impending doom.

His doom would be the cold – tonight, anyway - unless Soubi beat the weather to wrecking his sanity. He strained to hear the distant whining of the wind in the otherwise silent night, watched the small snowflakes afloat on the breeze, and thought how badly he wanted to stay put, and how much he hated Soubi right about then for forcing him to get up. He sighed, rubbing the back of his head with his hand as the other stifled a yawn. He did that again. That figured. Eh, Sou-chan, he thought. You will never change.

This was supposed to be freedom, he mused. He had hoped for that like he had never hoped for anything before. Well, fine. There was one thing, he had to admit; his inner voice never failed to provide a sour reminder of that _other wish_. And just as it had begun to take a more promising shape, it turned out to have been due for a pathetic end. If that was freedom, Kio thought angrily, then Agatsuma Soubi was far better off held captive. By Kio himself, preferably. He would have done a good job at it, he imagined. Why not? It wasn't like he had not spent years taking care of that impossible, infuriating guy. The guy who only had eyes for one person, anyway, and that person was not Kio.

Except where he hoped that maybe, _maybe_, those eyes would turn to him, now that Aoyagi was dead, they only turned empty. Like those of a ghost, Kio mused as he dragged himself up to close that damned door. For his perfection elsewhere, his loyalty to Seimei, Soubi was as inconsiderate of his, Kio's, comfort as he could be.

He was just as inconsiderate of himself, it seemed. Soubi's coat hung limply on the back of the only chair in the room. Kio glanced aslant with an involuntary shudder. He could have frozen to death by now, that bloody idiot. And if he had any self-preserving instinct left, he should leave him to the fate of his choice. One of those days, he would. He would grow tired of following in Soubi's footsteps...

Someday. Tonight, he was hastily tugging on a sweater, searching for his own coat lest he freeze as well. Soubi's coat felt so heavy in his hands as Kio grabbed it to follow Soubi yet again. It smelled of him, too; a faint scent of cigarettes, even fainter fragrance of the same shampoo Kio had bought the week before. There, around the collar. Soft, just good enough to bury his face in it, and remember. Suddenly self-conscious as he caught himself doing just that, Kio cleared his throat and glanced around, half-expecting to notice that he was being watched.

But Soubi cared little, even less as of late, and he was not there. He left those puny tokens in his wake, and Kio began to understand the merits of self-inflicted pain.

Soubi, though – that man took it way too far. He, Kio, had invested so much in keeping him in fairly good shape all this time. And what did he have to show for it? Another tiny, pathetic memory to his growing collection, where he clung to whichever of Soubi's possessions when he knew he was alone. He would not see his efforts thrown carelessly away like this, even if that idiot was hellbent on freezing to death. So he pursed his lips and slipped quietly around the door frame, frowning as he searched the dark surroundings beyond.

The crunch of fresh snow under his feet was loud in his ears; like something feeble that breaks under too much strain. "Soubi?" he called out as he hid his hands in the warmth of the coat he carried. Something uneasy saturated the chilly winter air. The snow in freefall stirred. "You must be somewhere here," he murmured to himself. "And if you've frozen that pretty ass of yours, I swear I'll kill you."

He looked down, seeking footsteps – fresh, he assumed, it could not have been long since Soubi had left the house. Under a thin layer of pure white, dark droplets marked an even path. His heart skipped a beat. "What the..." For once, Kio resented what the voice of his imagination whispered behind his ear. The images his mind eagerly supplied raised the small hairs on the back of his neck. Déja vu, he thought, silently half-cursing, half-hoping this wasn't what it used to mean.

No such thing was supposed to happen anymore. Done and over with, those shady escapades that left Soubi in pieces for Kio to put back together with shaking hands. No more blood. No more cuts and gashes Soubi refused to let him clean, unless he wasn't conscious enough to give his equally wounded pride a comprehensible protesting voice. No more sitting by the phone, no more loathed waiting for that dreaded call, for the panting voice to tell him where he had to run. No more of that, with Seimei's death. No more. Over. It was past now.

Or was it? Kio halted in mid-step, his attention drawn by a familiar object lying at his feet. White against white. He would have missed it, if not for the dark stains it bore that stood out amidst the lamp-lit street. No, he thought frantically, all hopes for the bloody trail to have been _not _Soubi's, gone. Not again.

Kio reached down to lift the fine fabric Soubi habitually wore around his scarred neck. He held it up. Discarded and bloody. Like its owner, so many times before. A surge of familiar rage raced through his veins. He prayed to whichever deity would listen that that bastard Aoyagi had not pulled some kind of a sick joke when he died. If, by some unfortunate turn of events, Seimei was still alive, Kio would kill him with bare hands. Properly, this time.

"Soubi!" he called out again, looking around in rising fear as the other was nowhere in sight. He sped up, unsteady steps on the slippery sidewalk faster, the tiny needles of cold in his cheeks forgotten.

"Hush."

Kio stopped, transition of movement almost too rapid to let him keep his balance. He looked to where the familiar voice scolded him for that dashing display in the gentlest of tones. Kio knew better. Resignation and contempt interlaced in Soubi's voice; a hard to kill impression of distance Kio suspected would have been there still, had Soubi whispered in his ear. Bitterness saturated its patience; it seeped through the words like venom lethal only to Kio's heart. He swallowed audibly, allowing himself another step, but he watched Soubi with wary eyes.

He was looking up, and Kio did the same. What was there, in the yellow street lamplight, that Soubi hoped to find? He stood still, breathless in Kio's eyes, for the lack of breathy clouds around him. Yet his lips were moving; an all but indiscernible whisper Kio could not hear. He could not pull his eyes off that face, the moment a still in the book of his memories of that man. And then it crashed, rushing back towards the clockwork of the world as his eyes traveled down towards Soubi's exposed neck.

"It's..." he almost choked on the words. Unsure of anything, with the exception of that sickly, captivating sight, Kio cast a dubious look at the bandage in his hand.

"Bleeding."

So casual. He suppressed a shiver, relieved to look down and away. He focused on the coat he had not realized he had been holding onto for dear life. Bleeding. Just like that.

He took a deep, calming breath. The harsh night air brought him back to his senses. "It's freezing," he said as he held out the coat, his voice a weak imitation of Soubi's detached tone. He would be casual as well, if that's what it took. As if the sight of Soubi in a single shirt, with blood trickling down his collarbones, was the most natural thing Kio could encounter in the dead of night.

"And because you're an idiot, and of course because I give more damn about you than I probably should--"

"Kio."

That voice. That tone, interrupting oh-so-quietly with an underlying notion that Soubi cared little for anything outside of the world inside his head. Kio felt positively murderous.

"Go back to sleep."

"You bet I will." Kio shrugged, walking now that he had regained control over his legs. "But first things first. Don't be difficult and put this on. I don't want your death on my record."

Nor on my conscience, his inner voice added. Soubi said nothing, even as Kio second-guessed the idea to approach him at all. All the years of looking out for him shrank with the realization that, even when Agatsuma Soubi crawled on all fours, he was still too quick for Kio to catch up on time. He was only good enough to make it for the aftermath, where he would gather the broken pieces and remove himself once Soubi did not need him anymore.

"You've got to snap out of this." He couldn't tell whether it was the sight of blood, one he had hoped never to see again, that slapped him wide awake – or that absent look in Soubi's eyes that made him speak. "Soon, I'll have to force-feed you, and tie you up so that you finally stop sneaking out at night like this. Without a coat? Are you insane?"

Soubi nodded a wordless thank-you as he retrieved his coat from Kio's hand. But their eyes never met, and Kio's frustration threatened to overflow. "You're a wreck. And you're wasting your life. You probably don't remember what school looks like anymore-"

"Thanks, Kio," Soubi's flat voice scattered his words, derailed his train of thought again. Flat, emotionless – was that the only way his name would ever touch those lips?

"You're welcome," he snapped with a bit more anger than he had intended to show. He squeezed the bandage in his hand, hiding it in the warm shelter of his sleeve. He should have handed that back, too. He kept it, for whatever sorry reason he would supply later on. He was probably developing perverted habits of his own. Could be contagious. Anything was, where Soubi was concerned.

He would worry about that later. "Really, if you appreciated it a little more, it'd make this entire butt-freezing action on my part a bit less unpleasant," he blurted, only half regretful because Soubi's eyes focused on him, at last. Kio swallowed hard, for the nth time since he got out of bed. Why could he never make this guy look at him with any different words?

"I told you to go back to bed."

Matter-of-fact, to the point, logical – except infuriating and stupid. "So you did, but you know what?" The bandage in his hand seemed to shrink in his grip. Kio's world narrowed down to contain only that face, the look of polite interest on it a mask skewed by either surprise, or hurt. Kio could not tell.

"I'm tired of it. Tired of looking at you wasting away like this. I'm sick of your stupid, moronic _devotion _to Aoyagi." He was breathing hard, aware of the humiliation he knew would dawn on him soon enough, but he didn't care. "You're way past mourning, Soubi. This is torture. You're chasing a ghost that never even cared--"

"Enough."

Kio sucked in a breath as words caught in his throat. It was no order, none of the usual requests. Was it so much as intended that way? He blinked. It was an honest plea, if Soubi's suddenly slumped shoulders were any indication. The snow at his feet was glittering as Kio looked down, tugging at his earrings with his free hand. It had to be the light reflecting in the tiny frozen crystals of ice. He would not cry over something like that.

"I give you what I have. What else do you need?" he asked, trying to keep the trembling away from his voice. It came out quite desperate, at least in his ears. Then again, he suspected Soubi ceased to listen, now that he was not talking about Aoyagi anymore. "If you need help, I'll help. Need someone to hear you out? Talk away. Want to relax at last, have some fun, no strings attached?" Bullshit, he thought, dead-set on not letting it ruffle his brittle composure. "I'm serious. Anything you need. Just let me--"

Soubi gave his head a light shake. "I need you to leave me alone," he said tiredly.

"More alone than you already are?" His eyes were burning. Kio bit down on his lower lip. He watched Soubi lift his hand and touch the slowly trickling blood on his collarbone. He caught himself rubbing his own fingers together inside his sleeve, mesmerized and horrified at feeling so. He could not be really smelling blood, he figured, but he could swear there was a faint metallic scent in the crisp air.

"If you think I'll go away if you ignore me," he said, trying his hardest to dismiss the sight of Soubi staring at his bloody hand. "You're wrong."

"You will go because I asked you to," he answered, as if that was obvious.

"Yeah?" Kio stopped himself from a habitual, defiant gesture of crossing his arms, lest Soubi see how low Kio had gone to get repaid for his, obviously unrequited, concern. "Too bad I don't follow your orders, Sou-chan. And you'd be better off following your own damn mind, for a change."

His words hung in the air, heavy, frozen like the tiny, unbidden droplets on his eyelashes. Kio held his breath. He did not know what he had hoped for, but he felt like an idiot for hoping at all. He might have imagined a moment like this to be when Soubi's shell finally cracked, when something resembling a human being crawled into his open arms. He might have pictured tears on Soubi's face – not on his own – a tangible sign of the pain Kio knew was there.

But none of that had ever happened. Not then. Not now. Deaf ears again, and a stone of a heart.

"Fine," he whispered, turning to leave before frustration claimed the better of him. Something in how light the falling snow around him seemed, compared to how his heart felt in his chest, infuriated him all the more. Something in how the world grew blurry the longer he looked made him grit his teeth.

"I need strength to do that."

Kio stopped, his back turned to Soubi but his heart back at his side. As if it had ever left, he mused.

"From a bond," Soubi added, a quiet echo of what Kio knew but failed to accept.

You're a slave, he thought to himself, biting his tongue before he spoke aloud. "Then bond with me," he blurted instead. It felt awkward to be talking to the empty street before him, straight rows of street lamps and their light a mockery of his despair that Kio did not care to name. "I can be strong if I need to be. I'll share my strength."

"Keep it." Soubi sounded deceptively gentle. How could someone be both in pieces and collected like this? "I'll find mine, soon."

Pointless, that. All of it. "Right." Kio forced himself to move, with every intention to walk away, go back to bed, hide under the blankets-- "Sure, yeah. Thanks Kio, but go to Hell. Fine, fine. Have it your way." --and convince himself that night never happened. Just pretend it didn't, he told himself even as the bandage, warm from his tight grip, doubled as a reality check. He should throw it away, but he could not bring himself to do it.

He felt Soubi's gaze on the back of his head, unwavering yet no less empty than before. If Seimei pulled at the strings of Soubi's heart, Soubi pulled at Kio's. Efficiently, at that. Kio turned, cursing himself for knowing he could never truly walk away.

"Insufficient strength turns a bond into a weakness," Soubi said in a calm, hollow voice. "You should understand."

Kio shook his head. He had so much to say to that, each word a clearcut eye-opener that would have worked on anyone. Except it was Soubi, of all people - the one he wanted to hear them most - and these days, he hardly listened at all.

He tightened his grip on the fabric in his hand. I'm sorry, he thought, pondering whether or not to say it, but Soubi looked away before Kio made up his mind. That, I'll never understand.

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_February 21st 2006_


End file.
